Most Popular Books by Carlos Castaneda

“We are incredibly fortunate to have Carlos Castaneda’s books. Tales of Power has brought us closer to understanding the teaching behind all the magic.” —The New York Times Book Review Bestselling author Carlos Castaneda’s groundbreaking works exploring the inspirational teachings of Yaqui spiritual leader don Juan Matus have enchanted millions of readers. With each lesson Castaneda gleans from his enigmatic teacher, he perceives a new reality based on the sorcerer’s mystical world. Tales of Power is the dynamic and captivating conclusion to don Juan’s teachings, where he imparts his most powerful and mysterious wisdom with a dazzling series of visions that are at once a spiritual initiation and a deeply moving farewell. Praise for Carlos Castaneda and Tales of Power “It is impossible to view the world in quite the same way.” —Chicago Tribune “Carlos Castaneda is one of the most profound and influential thinkers of this century. His insights are paving the direction for the future evolution of human consciousness.” —Deepak Chopra “The present book takes Carlos to the edge of the abyss itself, on an excursion into the unknown (the nagual) that represents the death of his personal, historical self (his tonal). Don Juan, his patient teacher, and don Genaro, his lively, acrobatic benefactor, must say farewell to him. They cannot help him any longer: he is totally alone, free, a warrior at last . . . Like all art . . . the work resists and transcends conventional categories of labeling.” —Psychology Today “Hypnotic reading.” —Time “One of the important statements of our time.” —Book World

Originally published in 1968.

Carlos recollects more of the teachings of Don Juan, including the true importance and meaning of sorcery and magic, and the illusory nature of all realities.

Carlos Castaneda takes the reader into the very heart of sorcery, challenging both imagination and reason, shaking the very foundations of our belief in what is "natural" and "logical." Fire from Within is the author''s most brilliant thought-provoking and unusual book, one in which Castaneda, under the tutelage of don Juan and his "disciples," at last constructs, from the teachings of don Juan and his own experiences, a stunning portrait of the "sorcerer''s world" that is crystal-clear and dizzying in its implications. Each of Carlos Castaneda''s books is a brilliant and tantalizing burst of illumination into the depths of our deepest mysteries, like a sudden flash of light, like a burst of lightning over the desert at night, which shows us a world that is both alien and totally familiar—the landscape of our dreams.

In Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castaneda introduces readers to this new approach for the first time and explores, as he comes to experience it himself, his own final voyage into the teachings of don Juan, sharing with us what it is like to truly “stop the world” and perceive reality on his own terms. Originally drawn to Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus for his knowledge of mind-altering plants, bestselling author Carlos Castaneda immersed himself in the sorcerer’s magical world entirely. Ten years after his first encounter with the shaman, Castaneda examines his field notes and comes to understand what don Juan knew all along—that these plants are merely a means to understanding the alternative realities that one cannot fully embrace on one’s own.

Carlos Castaneda takes the reader into the very heart of sorcery, challenging both imagination and reason, shaking the very foundations of our belief in what is "natural" and "logical." In 1961, a young anthropologist subjected himself to an extraordinary apprenticeship with Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus to bring back a fascinating glimpse of a Yaqui Indian''s world of "non-ordinary reality" and the difficult and dangerous road a man must travel to become "a man of knowledge." Yet on the bring of that world, challenging to all that we believe, he drew back. Then in 1968, Carlos Castaneda returned to Mexico, to don Juan and his hallucinogenic drugs, and to a world of experience no man from our Western civilization had ever entered before.

Carlos Castaneda takes the reader into the very heart of sorcery, challenging both imagination and reason, shaking the very foundations of our belief in what is "natural" and "logical." Back from the abyss, Castaneda encounter his greatest test on the journey towards impeccability and freedom: to outwit and overpower the sorcery of Doña Soledad, herself transformed from a defeated and meaningless life to a warrior, a hunter and a "stalker of power." Now the combat will begin. Now the journey will continue. Till the last danger is faced...the final paradox embraced.

World-renowned bestselling author Carlos Castaneda''s selection of his writings on the shamans of ancient Mexico. Originally drawn to Yaqui Indian spiritual leader don Juan Matus for his knowledge of mind-altering plants, bestselling author Carlos Castaneda soon immersed himself in the sorcerer’s magical world entirely. Ten years after his first encounter with the shaman, Castaneda examines his field notes and comes to understand what don Juan knew all along—that these plants are merely a means to understanding the alternative realities that one cannot fully embrace on one’s own. In Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castaneda introduces readers to this new approach for the first time and explores, as he comes to experience it himself, his own final voyage into the teachings of don Juan, sharing with us what it is like to truly “stop the world” and perceive reality on his own terms.

Bestselling author Carlos Castaneda introduces readers to the worlds that exist within their dreams.

Carlos Castaneda takes the reader into the very heart of sorcery, challenging both imagination and reason, shaking the very foundations of our belief in what is "natural" and "logical." His landscape is full of terrors and mysterious forces, as sharply etched as a flash of lightning on the deserts and mountains where don Juan takes him to pursue the sorcerer’s knowledge—the knowledge that it is the Eagle that gives us, at our births, a spark of awareness, that it expects to reclaim at the end of our lives and which the sorcerer, through his discipline, fights to retain. Castaneda describes how don Juan and his party, left thisworld—"the warriors of don Juan’s party had caught me for an eternal instant, before they vanished into the total light, before the Eagle let them go through"—and how he, himself, upon witnessing such a sight, jumped into the abyss.

For us to perceive any of the worlds that exist beside our own, not only do we have to covet them but we need to have sufficient energy to seize them. In this revolutionary book, Carlos Castaneda offers readers the key to this energetic conditioning for the first time, revealing a series of body positions and physical movements that enabled various sorcerers, and their apprentices, to navigate their own sorceric journeys. By sharing this centuries-old wisdom, Carlos Castaneda makes it possible for readers to travel to some of these other realms, which are as real, unique, absolute, and engulfing as our own world. Castaneda offers both a philosophical history of magical passes and an innovative, easy-to-understand instructional format, complete with more than 450 computer-generated illustrations. Written with humor, clarity, and authority, Magical Passes further illuminates the true meaning of sorcery and magic.

"Ordinarily, events that change our path are impersonal affairs, and yet extremely personal. My teacher, don Juan Matsus, said this is guiding me as his apprentice to collect what I considered to be the memorable events of my life…. Don Juan described the total goal of the shamanistic knowledge that he handled as the preparation for facing the definitive journey: the journey that every human being has to take at the end of his life. He said that what modern man referred to vaguely as life after death was, for those shamans, a concrete region filled to capacity with practical affairs of a different order than the practical affairs of daily life, yet bearing a similar functional practicality. Don Juan considered that to collect the memorable in their lives was, for shamans, the preparation for their entrance into that concrete region, which they called the active side of infinity." In this book written immediately before his death, anthropologist and shaman Carlos Castaneda gives us his most autobiographical and intimately revealing work ever, the fruit of a lifetime of experience and perhaps the most moving volume in his oeuvre.

Las lecciones de brujeria y la obra en que se narran llevan aqui sus postulados a la conclusion natural: los misterios del conocimiento secreto se disipan como la bruma en el acto mismo de cobrar concrecion definitiva; una acumulacion de poder personal resulta en la despersonalizacion del poder y todos los prodigios se funden en el unico prodigio de la vida terrena.

Carlos Castaneda has written ten books on the subject of shamans in Mexico. This book is a collection of quotes from those books. Accompanying the quotes, Castaneda has written his personal commentaries. Together, the quotations and commentaries create a counterpoint of ideas that will be of great interest to the reader.

In a most thought-provoking and unusual work, Carlos Castaneda continues his tuteluge under don Juan, the Yaqui Indian sorcerer--constructing a stunning portrait of the "sorcerer''s world" that is crystal clear and dizzying in its implications.

The first of this anthropologist''s books in which he narrates the first stage of teaching that will turn him into a "man of knowledge" under the guidance of a Yaqui sorcerer. By various means, don Juan subjects his pupil to a different reality, unexplainable by the framework of our thoughts but not by the ancient wisdom transmitted by the teacher.

"En el tercer libro sobre su iniciación como hombre de conocimiento, Castaneda desanda camino hasta los primeros tratos con su maestro, el brujo yaqui don Juan, y añade al recuento de prodigios las arduas lecciones de disciplina física y mental que, desde un principio, lo preparaban para un acto decisivo de poder: parar el mundo, suspender la percepción ordinaria, situarse entre esta realidad y la otra, la inculcada por el maestro. Esa realidad aparte, eje de las enseñanzas anteriormente reveladas, cobra así nuevo sentido como punto de apoyo, y el centro se desplaza hacia la mística del guerrero, el hombre sin rutinas, libre, fuido, imprevisible, que fiel a su esencial naturaleza terrena vive una vida impecable. El tema cierra con el relato del viaje al que alude el título, intimación dramática de la soledad y la áspera nobleza de tal vida." Viñeta: Francisco Toledo (portada).

El Arte de Ensoñar, el noveno y mas reciente libro de Carlos Castaneda, aparece despues de un período de seis años de silencio del autor."Don juan", escribe Carlos Castaneda en prólogo, "era un intermediario entre el mundo natural de la vida diaria y un mundo invisible, uno que él no llamaba lo sobrenatural, sino la segunda atención. Su taréa de maestro fue hacer accesible a mi esta configuración. En mis trabajos previos, he descrito sus metodos de enseñanza, al igual que las práticas que me hizo ejercitar, la más importante de las cuales fue sin duda, el arte de ensoñar. Don juan sostenia que nuestro mundo, que creemos ser único y absoluto, es solamente un mundo dentro de un grupo de mundos consecutivos, los cuales están ordenados como las capas de una cebolla. Aunque hemos sido condicionados para percibir únicamente nuestro mundo, efectivamente tenemos la capacidad de entrar en otros, que son tan reales, únicos, absolutos y absorbentes como el nuestro."

El último encuentro de Carlos Castaneda con Don Juan tuvo lugar en la cima de un cerro. Se encontraban también Don Genaro y otros dos aprendices, Pablito y Néstor. Hacia el desenlace, Pablito y Carlos saltaron desde la cumbre de la montaña, lanzándos a un abismo. En este quinto libro, Carlos Castaneda regresa a México con la intención de ver a Pablito y Néstor y pedirles ayuda para resolver sus dudas y conflictos, puesto que aunque su razón se niega a aceptarlo, una parte de su ser tiene la convicción de que tal salto efectivamente se produjo, por inconcebible que parezca. Lo que se encuentra entonces es con un asalto final a su racionalidad, planificado por Don Juan antes de su partida, junto con la revelación de algunos de los aspectos prácticos del arte de ensoñar. "Cuando nacemos traemos un anillo de poder. Casi desde el principio, empezamos a usar ese anillito. Así que cada uno de nosotros está enganchado desde el nacimiento, y nuestros anillos de poder están unidos con los anillos de los demás. En otras palabras, nuestros anillos de poder están enganchados al "hacer del mundo para construir el mundo. Un hombre de conocimiento, en cambio, desarrolla otro anillo de poder. Yo lo llamaría el anillo de "no-hacer". Así, con ese anillo, puede urdir otros mundos". Don Juan.

Each of Carlos Castaneda''s books is a brilliant and tantalizing burst of illumination into the depths of our deepest mysteries, like a sudden flash of light, like a burst of lightning over the desert at night, which shows us a world that is both alien and totally familiar -- the landscape of our dreams. Fire from Within is the author''s most brilliant thought-provoking and unusual book, one in which Castaneda, under the tutelage of don Juan and his "disciples," at last constructs, from the teachings of don Juan and his own experiences, a stunning portrait of the "sorcerer''s world" that is crystal-clear and dizzying in its implications.

The book is divided into two sections. The first section, The Teachings, is a first person narrative that documents Castaneda''s initial interactions with don Juan. He speaks of his encounters with Mescalito (a teaching spirit inhabiting all peyote plants), divination with lizards (by using a hallucinogenic powder rubbed on his temples to understand their language), and flying in animal form using the "Devil''s Weed" (the datura plant). The second, A Structural Analysis, is an attempt, Castaneda says, at "disclos[ing] the internal cohesion and the cogency of don Juan''s Teachings."[1]The 30th anniversary edition, published by the University of California Press in 1998, contains commentary by Castaneda not present in the original edition. He writes of a general discouragement from the project by his professors (besides Dr. Clement Meighan, a professor who supported the project early in its conception. In the forward, Castaneda gives "full credit" for the approval of his dissertation to Meighan.) He offers a new thesis on a mind-state he calls "total freedom" and claims that he used the teachings of his Yaqui shaman as "springboards into new horizons of cognition".

Don Juan is back, working miracles and playing practical jokes, seeking the wisdom of the warrior, and teaching it by means of riveting stories that are both magic and art

Carlos Castaneda a dispensé de part le monde l''enseignement ancestral des sorciers mexicains yaquis. Peu avant sa mort en avril 1998, il a tenu à composer ce petit volume regroupant des extraits de ses principaux ouvrages ; chaque partie étant introduite par un commentaire inédit de l''auteur.

Arizona, 1961, rencontre d''un étudiant en anthropologie de l''université de Californie à Los Angeles, Carlos Castaneda et d''un Indien Yaqui de la province de Sonora, nommé Don Juan. Homme réel ? Présence d''un pouvoir ? Sorcier réincarné ? Inventeur d''un prodigieux roman imaginaire ? On sait seulement de lui qu''il est un homme de connaissance. Parti de la fascination du peyotl dont il croyait tout savoir, Castaneda, accepté comme élève par Don Juan, va apprendre comment s''apprivoise la racine Datura Inoxia : l''herbe du diable, quand on oublie qu''on est un homme pour devenir un chien de lumière errant au Mexique.

En écrivant Le Voyage définitif, j''ai suivi les instructions de don Juan qui voulait me voir constituer une sorte d''album, une collection de souvenirs mémorables. Selon lui, la connaissance chamanique avait pour dessein ultime de nous préparer à affronter le " voyage définitif ", celui que doit faire chacun de nous au terme de sa vie. Ce que l''homme moderne, disait-il, désigne sous la vague expression de " vie après la mort " était pour ces chamans une existence concrète débordant d''activités pratiques, certes différentes de celles de notre vie habituelle, mais tout aussi pragmatiques et fonctionnelles. Se remémorer les épisodes importants de leur vie les préparaient à aborder ces contrées nouvelles qu''ils appelaient le " côté actif de l''infini ". Carlos Castaneda.